Electric cars are revolting

The Monday, March 9, 2009 edition of the Santa Monica Daily Press had two wonderfully juxtaposed environmental pieces from columnist Bill Bauer’s “My Write” and “Earth Talk” (ET) by the editors of E Magazine. Bill’s insightful piece on the boneheaded shenanigans of the City Council over the proposed light rail system down Colorado Avenue was, as usual, the most erudite smackdown of the local nanny-state class that I’ve ever read. Personally, I think the council was probably frightened that Jerry Rubin was going to chain himself yet again to a diseased tree on Olympic Boulevard in protest and wanted to avoid the bad publicity.

I lived and worked in mass-transit happy Japan for a number of years. Rapid transit was, and still is, the backbone of my traveling mien, so I’ve always wondered when America was going to step up on the evolutionary transportation ladder. Local enviro-liberalistas, however, are great on the “talk” about the beneficial efficacies of mass transit but “walk” off the end of the platform because only “words matter.”

The ET article, however, phoned home on the alleged viability and affordability of the mass use of PHEV’s (Plug in Hybrid Electric Vehicles) while citing self serving facts from the polluted PR cesspool of the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC). Let’s not forget that the NRDC deliberately created the alar-on-apples-causes-cancer hoax in 1989 in order to fluff their financial bottom line while costing hard working American farmers over $250 million in lost revenues. Trusting NRDC factoids is like trusting Hannibal Lecter in your kitchen.

ET cited the cost effectiveness of PHEV’s to parlay the mythological impact of man-made green house gases on the environment. It claimed that the U.S. has more than enough power, from our existing electrical utility infrastructure, to handle any additional electrical output for PHEVs. But then the ET article further cites that our current infrastructure can only supply 75 percent of our “current small vehicle fleet.” This implies our public sector fleet while ignoring the energy availability to privately owned vehicles. Naturally, their article demurs on the impact of what approximately 204 million additional privately owned PHEVs in the U.S. would have on the allegedly “adequate” U.S. power grid.

Is it an inconvenient truth that, over the last eight summers in California, we have had frequent and varied news reports over rolling blackouts and brownouts because California’s aging utility infrastructure can’t handle the increased power consumption from simple air conditioning needs?

My apologies for belaboring the visibly obvious.

And if the posturing planetary enviro-dorks at ET and the NRDC believe that pimping the hot, sexy photo of Tesla Motors’ all electric sports coupe will win the hearts and minds of NRDC trustee-poseurs like Laurie David, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Redford then its Obamanomical base price of $109,000 (with a $50,000 up front reserve fee) will surely meet the fiscal considerations of any restaurant waitress slinging green ham and eggs on Main Street. Affordable? Hmmm.

If the Tesla roadster is the pinnacle of pandered environmental correctness, then my question to the editors of E Magazine and the NRDC is, how many of these hot rods do you currently possess in your corporate fleet? When a carbon Sasquatch like a Laurie David or an Al Gore changes shoe sizes, please let me know.

I usually take the two block walk to the Sunday morning Farmers’ Market at Ocean Park and Main. I like to walk down along the parking lots behind the shops on Main Street. Without a Tesla insight, there is a smattering of Obama-mobiles (the Prius) yet there are a significantly greater number of Ford/GM/Lexus/Infinity/Beemer/Mercedes SUV “global warmers” in the lot while their Patagonia attired owners pick over the heirloom tomatoes and goat cheese at the market. Sorry, but it looks like the enviro-choir isn’t singing from the same automotive hymnal to me. Didn’t these folks get the memo? Maybe DiCaprio can chain himself to the axle of his yoga teacher’s Hummer in protest and sign some autographs before he charters another private jet to Cannes.

Is Earth Talk’s fair and equal suggestive solution to automotive pollution meant to spread the energy wealth around to only 75 percent of the working class while the Princes of Populism and their hacks and lackeys can continue to roll in first class comfort?

Or is this just another lane change we’ve all been waiting in traffic for?

Steve Breen believes in the KISS principle (Keep it Simple and Stupid) of conservation and is still “the best looking mailman at the U.S. Post Office”. He can be reached at dulcamarax@yahoo.com.